Monday, June 26, 2006

This quiet and peaceful-feeling shop is owned by members of Sydney's Tibetan community. Profits go to cottage industries run by Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal. Dundub Lama, the manager, tells me that while the shop mainly caters for Buddhist practitioners it does great business with the general community at Christmas time. It's very neat and clean with plain malamite shelves filled with books about Tibet and Buddhism, piles of Tibetan door curtains, prayer rugs, teas, incense burners, brass altars, mala bags, prayer bead counters, bright silk altar cloths, silver & gemstone jewellery, carpets, 100% wool handknitted jumpers (for only $50!), prayer wheels (table and hand-held), gorgeous woollen shawls, chod damarus (little drums that Dundub tells me are "for serious tantric practitioners"), beads, hats and mittens, and "lama bags" which are those cloth satchel-style bags that Buddhist monks and nuns carry. Shown below are some of my favourite items - these funny statuettes of monks playing horns, a little pure wool carpet (45cm square) with a lovely yak decoration, some of the chod damarus, and a box of mittens and socks.

5 comments:

Just shows how Marrickville has changed. We don't have such exotic shops in Campsie. Just four (yep: you read right) two-dollar shops. But we do have many, many ethnic food shops, which makes up for it, I suppose.

My greengrocer is Chinese, my tobacconist is Lebanese, and I don't know what the newsagents are.